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Helmet – Page 38 – Purebred PIGEON
Breed of the Issue - Helmet
CanadianHelmet Club
by Gary Parsons
M
y name is Gary Parsons.
My brother Ken and
I got our first pair of
Helmets in 1969 from a breeder
named John Hall here in Sarnia,
Ontario. We showed all around here
in the Province of Ontario for many
years. It took 5 to 10 years or so
before our bloodline started to do
really well and win at the shows.
So, in 1988 we decided to go to
Louisville, Kentucky and attend the
American Helmet Association show
at the Louisville National Young
Bird Show. There, at our first big
AHA show, we won Best Red
YC which ended up being the 2
nd
Reserve Champion MFC Helmet,
behind two Blue young Helmets
bred by Don Phy, from Oklahoma.
Unfortunately, my brother Ken
passed away in 1991, but I, and a few other Canadian Helmet
breeders have attended many Louisville National Young Bird
shows ever since that time.
I was AHA District 10 Director from 1988 to 1994. We held
a couple shows in District 10 every year during that time frame,
a “Young Bird” and an “All-Age”
show, and our membership grew
from around seven or eight the first
year or so to a high of around 15
members by the time I gave up being
District Director. Our show entries
climbed to a peak of around 150
MFC & MFP entries, which is quite
respectable. We almost always had
success in getting an AHA mem-
ber to come and judge our shows,
especially the All-Age show, and had
guys like Al Flynn, Bob Dunlap, and
Charles Dwight crossing the border
to judge our shows in District 10.
In 1994, I resigned as District
10 Director and then formed the
Canadian Helmet Club. I didn’t
create the CHC to compete against
the AHA – I created it to better
promote the Helmet Pigeon breed all
across Canada. This was a time period when the Canadian dollar
was much lower than the American dollar, and we were losing
members in District 10 because members were complaining that
the cost of membership for the AHA was just too much because
of the low Canadian dollar. So along with a few other good
Dan Homick, Dennis Manning & Gary Parsons
Red MFC Cock - John Ridler